With the first democratic elections in Iraq since 1953 scheduled for Sunday, there is almost nothing normal about the final days of this campaign.

Sure there are trappings of a standard election. Streets in cities across Iraq are plastered with campaign posters, the television carries political advertisements from a number of the leading candidates, and thousands of Iraqis are submitting last-minute voter registrations. Many of the estimated 280,000 Iraqis who are registered to vote abroad have already started handing in their ballots, including some 26,400 voters in Germany who are already making their way to polling places on Friday.

Just as important as the visible trappings of democracy, however, are the elements that are missing. Almost all of the over 7,000 candidates running for the 275-member National Assembly have decided against holding any campaign rallies and none of the candidates are making themselves available for the standard, pre-election "meet and greet" events. At the most, they are opting for small, private gatherings with local chieftains or in private homes. In addition, many of the 256 party groups and individuals running have elected not to make public the names of all their candidates, although the Iraqi Electoral Commission promised to begin printing the names in newspapers starting Thursday. Even the polling stations have been kept mostly secret thus far -- posters will be put up and handbills passed out on Saturday telling voters where to cast their ballot.

"I have lived in Samarra for 24 years and I don't know who is running or the names of the parties," Shahar Mahmud a 60-year-old retired teacher told Reuters. "I don't know where to vote."

"Washing the street with voters' blood"

At issue, of course, is security. Extremists have promised to do everything in their power to disrupt Sunday's election and are threatening widespread attacks against polling centers. According to security officials, interrogations of terrorism suspects indicate that up to 250 attacks may be planned for the weekend. Flyers distributed in Baghdad and in other parts of the country have warned potential voters from participating in the election saying that insurgents would "wash the streets of Baghdad with voters' blood." On Friday, the terror network led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi issued yet another warning against voting. Saying that voters will have only themselves to blame if they are injured or killed, the message, posted on a Web site, said, "Beware, beware not to approach the centers of atheism and vice," in an apparent reference to polling centers.

And as the election approaches, the violence has been increasing day by day. A designated polling station in the town of Samarra, just north of Baghdad, was bombarded by mortar shells on Thursday and another voting site, a school administration building likewise in Samarra, was blown up by armed men after they first told the staff to leave. In the city of Ramadi, the capital of the violence-plagued Anbar Province in western Iraq, insurgents attacked a joint US-Iraqi force guarding a school voting center. There were at least a dozen other attacks against Iraqi and US security forces on Thursday. On Wednesday, rebels launched a string of car bombs and attacks on polling stations across the country killing at least 13 people.

United States, Iraqi, and multinational troops are doing what they can to try to ensure safety for the estimated 15 million Iraqis over 18 who are eligible to vote (out of a total population of 27 million). Internet cafes are to remain closed over the weekend and the cell phone network will be shut down in an attempt to disrupt communication among the insurgents. Automobile traffic between cities on Sunday will be forbidden.

Further security precautions include plans to erect concrete bomb barriers in front of most of the roughly 5,220 polling stations and posting police and soldiers on the day of the election. Yet even such basic measures are proving difficult to realize. Many workers, contracted to install the barriers, have disappeared out of fear of attack and a number of Iraqi policemen, according to the Associated Press, have abandoned their posts, likewise afraid. In addition, there are a number of reports that election workers have walked off the job because they feared for their lives.

Some welcome the chance to vote

The United States military had been hoping to keep a low profile during the elections. A total of 300,000 Iraqi and multinational troops, with the US taking the lead, will be deployed across the country in an effort to provide security for the elections.

Yet despite the extremely volatile security situation and the likelihood that threats of violence will keep many voters home on Sunday, many in Iraq welcome the chance to vote. A number of candidates are doing what they can to reach remote parts of the country to encourage people to vote and some Iraqis say that, despite not knowing the names on the individual party lists, they have a sense of what most of the main parties stand for.

Even so, questions of legitimacy are likely to dog the election results. Given the amount of secrecy necessary to ensure the safety of election workers, it remains unclear how and when ballots from the thousands of polling sites will be delivered to the electoral commission in Baghdad as required by law. One election official told AP that he doesn't think there will be any exit polling done either. He said he doubted that exit polls could be accurate in a country with virtually no reliable data on the demographics of its population, an electorate intimidated by threats of violence, and an insurgency that has vowed to attack polling places and all who frequent them.

In addition, many of the country's Sunni population are threatening to boycott the election in hopes of robbing the resulting government of legitimacy. The minority is afraid of losing the power they have enjoyed in Iraq for decades.

Despite the potential problems, however, US President George W. Bush is remaining optimistic and maintains that Sunday's elections in Iraq represent the installation of true democracy in Iraq. "I anticipate a grand moment in Iraqi history," Bush said in an interview with the Dubai-based television channel Al-Arabiya. "We anticipate a lot of Iraqis will vote. Clearly there are some who are intimidated. The fact that they're voting, in itself, is successful."